A Packed October Newsletter: 4 Books, 4 Marathons, 2 Posts

Moinsen, everyone! 👋

Good to finally be writing a newsletter again. Since I don’t want to clog your inboxes, I’m saving up on topics so each one always is full with new stuff. Let me know if that’s fine with you or if you would actually prefer to be notified immediately after publication about new blog posts! (Just reply to this email.)

Since the last time I sent out a newsletter, I have published two new posts, ran four marathons and read and published my thoughts about four newly read books. Also, there has been another update to the teesche.com website – see if you can spot it! I’ll tell you down below. 

📚 Four New Books

These have brought my 2023 total up to 22, meaning I’m just 2 books short of reaching my goal of having read 24 books in a year. It happened all naturally without me pushing myself to read more. That just tells me I chose the right ones! Take a look at my summaries and thoughts, maybe there’s an interesting book for you among them as well!

• The Courage to Be Disliked (Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake), a book about individual psychology and empowerment
• How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess (Dr. Caroline Leaf), offering some parenting advice
• Elon Musk (Walter Isaacson), the new 680-page biography
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams), one of Musk’s favorites and a fun classic sci-fi novel

🏁 Four Finished Marathons

While I’m not even close to reaching my 2023 goal of running 24 marathons, I made some good progress towards it in recent weeks. Here are the races I did since I sent out my most recent newsletter at the beginning of September:

• Sep 16th, Erfurt Marathon (3:52h including an extra mile)
• Sep 17th, Kassel Marathon (3:26h)
• Oct 1st, Bremen Marathon (3:24h)
• Oct 8th, München Marathon (3:18h)

There’s a clear trend going on, I’m getting faster! October is also looking good and is full of races I’m happy to be a part of. 

🧮 Quantification Update

You might be aware of my little quantified self bit on the front page of teesche.com. I have been measuring data for a while, but just recently noticed there’s a good opportunity to display four more tiles, because I already save the data in my database. The new ones are:

• The ScreenTime I’ve had the day before – I’m going for 60 minutes max per day
• The last time I did a Breathing Exercise – if you haven’t, try one out, those feel amazing!
• My total lifetime marathon count, including ultra marathons, of course, currently at 79. Maybe breaking 100 in 2024?
• And my current personal best on the marathon distance. I pull this out of my races database, too. Hopefully breaking it soon!

This brings the total tile count to 16, an optically nice number. 

⌚ NEW POST: The Beginner’s GPS Watch Review

As teased in the previous newsletter, I have bought the newly updated COROS PACE 3 GPS watch for myself and wrote down my thoughts after having used it for about a week. It’s one of the best watches for many different types of runners, including those just getting started. 

There has been quite a bit of feedback to my post, most of it very interesting. A spokesperson from COROS reached out and offered to send me more COROS gear to test, which is currently on the way here. I won’t do any paid advertising for anyone in the near future, but I’m happy to check out some gear and give my unbiased thoughts so readers like you can profit from that. 

‼️ NEW POST: Erfurt & Kassel Marathon Double Weekend

Yes, I have published another blog post, this time more in line with what I usually do: race reporting. Two marathon races in one weekend is a special occasion, so I think you might find it interesting to see what that’s like. 

Have a look!

Hope you enjoyed this newsletter – see you again in Mid November, when I’ll certainly have a few more racing and reading updates for you!

All the best and have a great day,
– Teesche